Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #1 – “I Fought the Law and Kicked Its Butt!”!

This series already loses 50 points for that awful Issue #1 title. BUT, it’s time for something completely different. Chipping away more at the New 52 Batfamily, I now tackle Red Hood and the Outlaws, a thing I’m completely unfamiliar with except for a passing reference to Red Hood in Batman: The Man Who Laughs. From what I gathered, the Joker used to be Red Hood. I could be totally, utterly wrong about that. I should be ashamed of myself!

Since I don’t have much of an introduction for this one, I shall kindly step aside and let MYSELF take the reins. It’s all yours, Tom.

Thanks, Tom, you little rapscallion.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #1 [November, 2011]
Written by: Scott Lobdell
“I Fought the Law and Kicked Its Butt!”

Looking at the cover, I don’t know how I feel about this already. For one thing, NONE of those three are recognizable to me. How am I supposed to enter this thing with any sort of sense of investment? And another thing, why are these three on top of each other’s shoulders while fighting four guys with guns (and one with a crowbar, apparently)? That looks very unwieldy.

“His name is Roy Harper. He’s an idiot. Nice guy, but an idiot.”

Blunt narration, straight to the point! This means I can’t be the only one who jumped into this series with little background. I’m glad they expected this from people and didn’t hit the ground running with something like “RED HOOD, YOU GOTTA ELIMINATE DR. CRABTABULOUS! REMEMBER YOUR CREED! THE FATE OF JUPITER LIES IN YOUR HANDS; AT LEAST ALTERNATE JUPITER. YOU KNOW HOW JEFF CAN BE WHEN IT COMES TO WORKING UNDERCOVER WITH THE NEAPOLITAN INITIATIVE, SO IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO FARNCH YOUR WAY THROUGH DOOPINE CITY FIRST.”

Anyway, Roy Harper’s an idiot. He looks like if Shaun White fucked Eric Stoltz from Mask. His handcuffed ass is being escorted to outside quarters of the prison. He doesn’t see sunlight too often. He has a visitor, believe it or not. I, for one, believe it, because I don’t know this guy and I’m told that, while an idiot, he’s a nice guy.

The visitor is a really fat, sweaty pastor. “You have five minutes to confess your sins,” one of the guards tells Harper. The open room they’re in is surrounded by guards on a high walkway circling the perimeter.

“I am Pastor Beerback of the International Agency of Amnesty – and these conditions are deporable,” he cries. He has little lightning bolts around his surprised head, indicating the universal sign of “finding something deplorable”. “Rest assured, I’ll be filing a complaint with the state department!”

Filing a complaint with what? Pen ink scrawled on an enormous ham? The guards don’t give a shit what this man of God thinks. Shake a leg.

Is that electricity in your pants, or are you happy to see me?

Pastor Beerback asks for some privacy and the overly macho guard slinks away. Beerback opens his bible, revealing the pages hollowed out and containing a weapon. A retractable weapon I guess, but it doesn’t seem like a very big book to me to be able to contain anything actually helpful.

“Holy God!” exclaims Harper.
“Exactly, son,” responds Beerback, checking behind him to make sure nobody ain’t seein’ nuthin’, “An open mind and an open book will set you free.”
“Is that really my bow?”
“Yes.”
“And you realize this is totally insane, right?”
“Amen!”

Beerback lifts one of his suspenders and it makes a clicking sound. Immediately, the pastorly face breaks away and a man in a red hood appears underneath the charade. Or, if you will, a Red Hood. “His name is Jason Todd,” announces some more narration, this time from Roy Harper. I suppose Jason Todd did Harper’s narration. “A lot of people say he’s crazy. Like, say, the entire staff of Arkham Asylum. Maybe they’re right. I’m hardly in a position to judge anyone. But as he pops out of his disguise – blows the chain off my ball – and gives me my bow and quiver?…”

“…Let’s just say the Red Hood is MY kind of crazy!”

All right! A dangerous criminal and another dangerous criminal! I like where we’re going with this! Perhaps a third dangerous criminal is in the mix as well?? That’ll really blow the chain off my ball!

These two shoot up the place. Guns and bullets and bows and arrows. Funny how this rescue attempt turned into bloodshed. Ha ha oh well.

After busting the (wooden) front door down (by launching a guard through it), they (Red Hood and one Outlaw) escape (the prison).

Are those keys in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?

“Tell me you broke down and asked your old pal for keys to the Batmobile,” Harper says as they keep sprinting.
“Something like that,” Todd responds, showing him something that’s not at all the Batmobile, but it sure is “something like the Batmobile”. It’s a military humvee of some kind. Let’s burn rubber, baby!

Now they’re driving in a vehicle killing people instead of running on foot and killing people. “So what happened, Red?” Harper asks as they speed across bumpy terrain at 700 mph, “You said that if I took this gig – if I became a Soldier of Fortune – that I was going to be on my own.”

But on his own he ain’t right now! Harper likes this. Maybe they could be a team again!

“The only reason I’m here is ‘cause if anything happens to you – that would make me the worst former sidekick ever,” Todd answers rather sweetly, I suppose.

OK, third dangerous criminal time: Starfire from Planet Tamaran, which is also my favorite motorcycle manufacturer. Starfire is barely wearing any clothes, and I wouldn’t expect any female superhero/supervillain type to wear more than eight square inches of cloth on her body at any given moment.

“Born a princess. Raised a slave. The Citadel were a militant race. She was traded into slavery by her sister – an effort to buy peace from a race of maurading aliens. So she’s not a big fan of soldiers… on any world. It’s a feeling I thought I could use to my advantage today.”

Blah blah blah. Jason Todd sure likes to talk. I don’t like that about him already. I don’t like my human characters to talk. Or see or hear or eat or sleep. Or love or live or fuck or die. Seriously.

Is that a red hood on your head, or are you happy to see me?

Todd also implies, and by “implies” I mean “directly says unprovoked”, that he and Starfire have kanoodled and slurped each other. And that is No. 8 on my list of things I don’t like my human characters doing! That’s a big one.

“Is there anything else I can do, Jason,” Starfire says, flying alongside the humvee after having blasted the three tanks ahead that were threatening the likes of them with their tankiness. Jason Todd tells her to get the fuck out of here and, like, kill some more miltiary guys and tanks when you get a chance, please. His wish is her command! And off she goes. Harper is sad that he wasn’t introduced, but this idiot wasn’t going to get any from firecrotch anyway! Ha ha! Get it? Firecr– oh never mind.

THREE WEEKS LATER… ON THE ISLAND PARADISE OF ST. MARTINIQUE: “I know I shouldn’t be here. On this planet. I’m not wanted here. Very few aliens are. But what are my options? Besides, those two humans make me laugh. When I can tell them apart.”

That’s Starfire talking. If it’s even possible, she’s even more scantily clad than a few panels ago when she was rather scantily clad. There are two pages dedicated to showing her bikini-ed body from three different angles, and there’s no doubt in my mind that artist Kenneth Rocafort was leaking vital penial fluids while drawing this stuff up. I’m not posting any of it here for free. Buy the book, you weirdos.

By now I’ve noted that Jason Todd gets the black narrative boxes, Roy Harper gets the red ones, and Starfire gets the pink ones. Keep this in mind, it will be very important for me and not for you!

Harper and Todd are hanging out on the beach staring at her like a couple of creepy sex offenders. They are enjoying the sunny beach! Harper has a Bloody Mary! Todd has a boner!

“And here I thought you hung out in an abandoned opera house. In Gotham City,” Harper says, still staring at the lady.
“Pffft, Gotham sucks,” Todd proclaims rather PRESUMPTUOUSLY. Don’t you know that Gotham is BATMAN’S city? Show it some respect! “The psychopaths that live there deserve each other. Even the bad guys.”

Is that a Dick Grayson on your mind, or are you happy to see me?

Here’s the thing about Tamarans, man. They’re aliens, see. Humans are barely anything. Just lumps of nothing, really. Dumb chunks of meat that, like, talk or something. And you know how much Tom hates it when humans talk! Really ruffles his feathers. Plus, when it comes to Earth, Tamarans don’t care about shit. Ergo, therefore, and verily, she doesn’t give a damn about anything any of us have to talk about at all. Can I freshen your drink?

A woman with white braided hair and a tight black jumpsuit approaches Todd and asks for a moment of his time. Her name is Essence. She is the last person Todd expected to see again. What’s shaken, babes?

“There have been several murders recently. Where organs have been taken from living bodies,” she reports. Well isn’t that a fucking buzzkill, lady. We are on an island paradise right now, and this kind of news isn’t cool at all.

Todd doesn’t want to hear it. “Don’t fall off your broomstick on the way home,” he says, walking away. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! The organs were taken years before the victims died. With no incisions! How does that grab ya?

This means something called the Untitled were involved. Intriguing.

Meanwhile, Roy Harper is boring the shit out of Starfire, but she still asks him if he wants to fuck her. He goes “KAK!”, but then he says ok.

Yeah yeah yeah. He’s happy to see her. We get it.

Todd doesn’t want anything to do with these “Untitled”. If that is their real name. Something is also said about the “All-Caste” and the Untitled is why the All-Caste were formed centuries ago. Anyway, it has nothing to do with him or her, so let’s move on.

Essence is like, sorry buttface, but it actually does have something to do with us. Check this out: *pulls out fancy portal viewing mirror thingy after casting some runes* I don’t know what she’s showing him. It looks like a dirty bag on the ground. This apparently shocks Todd. Something about a woman. This is supposed to be Essence’s jurisdiction, though, I suppose. She says she was banned from the All-Caste and Todd knows that!

And she begs Todd to “return” for her, even though he vowed never to “return”. Essence looks sad. Todd agrees to “return” for her. That was quick. I barely paid attention to any of that, but REST ASSURED that Roy Harper and Fire Stick are humping somewhere on the beach right now!

“Half a world away… …in the city of Chicago.” Hey, I’m there right now! Can you see me? I’m waving as I leap off the Hancock Tower and plummet to the sidewalk below.

Is that a whatever on your whatever, or are you whatever whatever whatever?

A young man is sitting among his twelve computer screens. He downloads a photo of Starfire in a bikini that a young kid took on the beach and sent to his various Instagrams and Twitters and TikToks and Friendsters. “A Tamaranean. On Earth. At last.”

Then he unzips his pants and grabs some off-brand vaseline…

Back in St. Martinique, Harper and Firestone are sleeping soundly in a really crappy-looking bed. Jason Todd sneaks into the cabana, grabs his red hood from a dresser drawer, and slinks back out.

Twelve hours later in the “Well of the All-Caste” somewhere high up in the Himalayan Mountains, where it’s even scarier than the Well in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Jason Red Todd Hood kneels over a gross, desiccated, unsexy corpse body. He looks like he’s in a temple in Skyrim. Hey, that’s two video game references in a single paragraph! Those are two of the only ten video games I’ve ever played! Am I exaggerating? Who knows!

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you, Ducra. I’m sorry you sent me away. I’m sorry I let you.”

He hears shuffling. He looks behind him. Looks like a bunch of those shuffling dungeon dwellers in Skyrim, wielding all sorts of axes and scythes and one guy even has a scepter with a feather attached! Todd aims his gun. “Finally. Someone to shoot.”

“TO BE EXPLAINED…”

Final Thoughts

They had to wrap the last few pages with a few open mysteries or else no one who bought this comic book would bother with anything going forward!

Eh, I’m not impressed at all yet. This is essentially Bro Comics: Featuring Bro, his buddy Bro, and the Ho that the Bros want to bone. And some people may like that! I, for one, only like, uh, maybe 80% of that.

So I’ll keep going!